Shiite party picked up an additional seat while the Sunni Islamist candidates were badly defeated.
Bahrain’s main Shiite opposition group won all the seats it contested, which were all the seats in the primarily Shii sections of the island nation.
But the vote is likely to have little impact on the country, where politics are tightly controlled by the Sunni rulers.
Sunni Islamists looked set to be the poll’s biggest losers. They retained only three of their 15 seats, losing some to Sunni independents, and will be forced to fight for another seven in a second round of voting this Saturday.
The kingdom’s Shiite opposition group, Wefaq, won all the 18 seats it contested, out of a total of 40 seats in parliament, election officials said. Wefaq held 17 seats in the outgoing assembly.
The opposition accuses the government of apportioning districts in such a way as to prevent Shiites from gaining a majority in the assembly. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) reports that some Shiite districts have as many 20,000 voters while there are Sunni districts with only a few thousand voters, thus allowing Sunnis to send many more members to parliament.
Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet, has a Shiite majority but is governed by the Sunni al-Khalifah dynasty. Many Bahraini Shiites say they face discrimination in government housing and jobs.
The run-up to the vote was overshadowed by a broad security crackdown against some Shiite opposition groups in August with hundreds arrested.
Bahrain’s parliament has limited powers as its bills need to pass an upper house whose members are appointed by the king. Ultimate power in the country rests with the ruling family.
Two Sunni Islamist groups loosely allied with the government, Al-Asalah and Al-Menbar, suffered the most in the poll as several seats they contested went to independent Sunni candidates. Their victory in the last election had been a surprise.
“It was in line with expectation that this parliament would have fewer Islamists. Their supporters were not that impressed with their performance,” said Jane Kinninmont, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
WINEP said it is no longer certain the Shiis hold a majority of the population. The government has been providing fast-track naturalization to Sunnis from Pakistan, East Africa and Arab states. It quoted a Sunni source as saying 200,000 Sunnis had gained citizenship, which may be enough to already give Sunnis an outright majority of the population.
Bahraini officials are even more skittish of the Bahraini Shiis now that they feel subject to pressure from the Islamic Republic. Bahrain says nothing critical of Iran publicly, but privately officials are highly critical of Iranian goals of hegemony in the Persian Gulf.